I offered to shot a wedding last weekend for an old neighbor at no charge. I gave out business cards in hopes that it will drum up some future business. Then I get a call yesterday; a gentleman in the wedding party would like to buy all the images I took and have them put on a DVD so he could make a wedding album for them. I just offered to shoot it and Photoshop it as a gift and for experience in doing weddings. My question is this what is a fair price to charge the guy there are over 900 photos and will probably take up three DVD’s. I figured $400 that’s about four hours of work @ $100 an hour. This seems fair to me, anyone with experience please shed some light.

Hmm, I wouldn't give him full res crops to be honest. If you sell him a dvd with all the images, then what happens if the bride and groom and friends want reprints down the line? They don't have to go to you, and pay for the prints, they get to go to this guy and god forbid get the full res files. Bit of a tough one.

I offered to shot a wedding last weekend for an old neighbor at no charge. I gave out business cards in hopes that it will drum up some future business. Then I get a call yesterday; a gentleman in the wedding party would like to buy all the images I took and have them put on a DVD so he could make a wedding album for them. I just offered to shoot it and Photoshop it as a gift and for experience in doing weddings. My question is this what is a fair price to charge the guy there are over 900 photos and will probably take up three DVD’s. I figured $400 that’s about four hours of work @ $100 an hour. This seems fair to me, anyone with experience please shed some light.

Thanks

James

it's up to you. if you think that your work is worth that then by all means, but if it's shoddy work and you charged for it- it might be career suicide.

You don't need to give out high res images and therefore you don't need to charge the earth and have to adjust your prices accordingly. Photography, as you'll learn, charges not by the time you took images for or how long you processed them for, but by how efficiently you turnaround your work. Ultimately for many, you'll end up charging less than you initially wanted.

I usually photograph a wedding and then that night I upload all of them online, very low-res. Then direct people to go to my site and an instant word of mouth and a portfolio work showroom.

Of course the the two newly-weds get high-res photos, I also give them to both their parents (nowadays mostly the parents are paying of their child's wedding). Recently we started using that iMovie app on the mac to make some cool videos, timed to some music makes a powerful way of showing off your work. It will leave a lasting impression on you and your business.